Uganda Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Uganda

Uganda’s economy is projected to grow by roughly 6.1% in 2025 (IMF DataMapper estimate; 2024 growth was 6.3%), with the World Bank’s Uganda Economic Update recording real GDP growth accelerating to 6.6% in the second half of 2025, up from 6.0% in 2024 — among the fastest growth rates in East Africa, driven substantially by construction and trade. Nominal GDP was estimated at $64.28 billion for 2025, with GDP per capita of roughly $1,206-$1,340 depending on source and methodology — still one of the lowest in the East African Community. The currency is the Ugandan shilling (USh), which weakened during September 2026, trading at approximately USh 3,841-3,920 per US dollar in the two weeks to September 15, 2026, partly attributed to rising fuel import costs. Inflation has remained low and stable by regional standards: annual headline inflation was 4.1% in the year to August 2026, up marginally from 4.0% in July 2026, driven by core inflation (3.5%) and rising food-crop prices such as Irish potatoes and matooke. Structurally, the economy remains agriculture-dependent in employment terms even as services and industry now dominate output: agriculture contributed approximately 26.2% of GDP in FY2025/26 and about 36% of export earnings, while employing an estimated 68% of the working population; manufacturing’s GDP share is disputed between sources — one citing 16.5% and another putting it at 14.47% in 2025, down from 15.11% in 2024 — a discrepancy treated as a data-quality flag rather than resolved definitively here. Uganda’s private sector is overwhelmingly small-scale: micro, small and medium enterprises account for an estimated 90% of the private sector, contribute roughly 75% of GDP, and employ over 3 million people, per the State of Entrepreneurship in Uganda 2024 study (Ichuli/Ipsos, commissioned by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives with Mastercard Foundation support, published January 2025) — though this is a share-of-economy metric rather than an exact enumerated size-tier firm-count breakdown, since Uganda’s last formal enterprise census dates to 2010/11 and is too outdated for current use.

Uganda’s total exports climbed sharply to roughly $12.7 billion in the year ending November 2025, up about 33% from $8.5 billion the prior year, driven overwhelmingly by gold and coffee, which together accounted for 76.6% of total export earnings in 2025. Gold exports alone hit a record $5.8 billion in the year to November 2025, up 75.8% year-on-year — but this figure requires an important caveat: independent analysts and UN Panel of Experts reporting have repeatedly found that Uganda’s declared gold exports vastly exceed its own domestic mine output, with substantial volumes smuggled from conflict zones in eastern DRC and re-exported via Kampala refineries. Coffee exports also hit record levels, and in 2025 Uganda overtook Ethiopia to become Africa’s largest coffee exporter by volume, though over 60% of coffee exports go to the EU, exposing the sector to the EU Deforestation Regulation. On investment, FDI net inflows stood at 6.16% of GDP in 2024; no current, dated entity-level percentage-of-firms-with-foreign-ownership indicator specific to Uganda could be located despite a 2025 World Bank Enterprise Survey for Uganda existing. Regionally, the country sits at a pivotal moment: the $5.6 billion East African Crude Oil Pipeline (1,443 km, Hoima to Tanga, Tanzania) was reported over 90% complete as of late July 2026, with a revised “first oil” target of late September 2026 for the Tilenga and Kingfisher fields on Lake Albert — though the original target was July 2026 and some analysts suggest early 2027 is more realistic, and the project has drawn a UK High Court lawsuit (filed July 2026) from displaced farmers and the withdrawal of 40+ Western banks on ESG grounds. Uganda also continues to position Kampala as a regional trade and logistics hub for the wider Great Lakes region, with a new Standard Gauge Railway’s Eastern Line (Malaba-Kampala, 272 km) launched in November 2024, expected to roughly halve the cost of moving a 20-foot container from Mombasa to Kampala.

Uganda’s population was recorded at 45,935,046 in the National Population and Housing Census 2024, with a growth rate of 2.9% and a very young age structure (48.2% aged 0-14); UBOS mid-2026 projections put the population at approximately 50.3 million by end-2026. The labor market remains dominated by informality: ILO-sourced data cited 90% informal employment in Uganda in 2021, and UBOS’s National Labour Force Survey found that 41% of youth aged 18-30 (roughly 9.3 million individuals) are not engaged in employment, education, or training — a figure that sits in tension with a separately modeled youth unemployment rate of just 4.18% for 2025, illustrating how narrow unemployment definitions understate the real scale of underemployment among Uganda’s youth. Uganda remains, by UNHCR’s count, Africa’s largest refugee-hosting country and the third-largest globally, hosting approximately 1.95 million refugees and asylum seekers as of end-August 2025 (57% from South Sudan, 31% from DRC), with arrivals continuing at an average of roughly 600 people per day amid conflict in neighboring South Sudan and eastern DRC. Politically, Uganda held a general election on January 15, 2026, in which incumbent President Yoweri Museveni (NRM, in power since 1986) was declared re-elected with 71.65% of the vote against Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine, NUP) at 24.72%, with turnout of 52.5% (down 6.85 points from 2021); the NRM also won 372 of the parliamentary seats. The election was widely criticized internationally: the US Senate called it “a hollow exercise,” Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented abuses, and the Electoral Commission shut down mobile internet on January 13, 2026, citing misinformation and fraud concerns. Post-election violence resulted in at least seven protester deaths on January 15-16, 2026, and Bobi Wine was placed under house arrest before reportedly fleeing after a raid on his residence on January 16, 2026.